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Hamid Ansari claims physical torture during interrogation by Pakistani officials, has suffered damage to eye

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Hamid Ansari claims physical torture during interrogation by Pakistani officials, has suffered damage to eye

Hamid Nehal Ansari, an Indian national, lodged in a Pakistani jail for six years on espionage charges, who returned to India on Tuesday, has claimed that he was physically tortured by the Pakistani intelligence agencies in Islamabad.

Ansari met the External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday, along with his family and while thanking Swaraj for the efforts the Indian Government put in for his release, narrated what he went through in Pakistan.

According to reports, Ansari told the minister that he was kept in solitary confinement initially after his arrest and was interrogated by the Pakistani authorities. “My left eye has been damaged by the interrogating officials”, Ansari has claimed. He has also stated that he was given some treatment by doctors there.

After Ansari’s homecoming was announced, many on social media had hastened to credit Pakistan for the ‘generosity’, most notable among them being Rajdeep Sardesai. Sardesai had thanked Pakistani PM Imran Khan for listening to the ‘pleas of a mother’. However, with Ansari now claiming imprisonment and solitary confinement in inhuman conditions along with physical torture, the claims of Pakistan’s benevolence looks dubious.

Speaking to India Today, Ansari has stated that he was put in solitary confinement for 3 long years. He was denied daylight and was even starved for days. He has stated that he was not allowed to even bathe for forty days once during summer. His body was worm infested and he was regularly tortured during interrogation.

An engineer and business professional from Mumbai, Ansari had gone to Kabul, Afghanistan, on 4 November 2012, on a tourist visa for a job in aviation. He had entered Pakistan on 12 November using fake identification documents, to meet a woman from Kohat in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa who had befriended him online and had been in Pakistan custody ever since.

Ansari furthered that there were Pakistani girls on social media who pose as friends and assure to help. “I thought from the heart and not from the brain. They asked me to come through Afghanistan. They kept fake IDs and documents in my pocket,” PTI had quoted him as saying.

However, in the meeting which was held between Ansari’s family and EAM Sushma Swaraj, Ansari’s mother expressed her gratitude towards the Indian government for their persistent efforts, resulting in the fortunate homecoming of her son, after six years in Pakistan’s captivity.

In a video clip of the meeting released by the Ministry of External Affairs, Ansari’s mother Fauzia is heard telling Swaraj: “Mera Bharat Mahan, meri madam Mahan, sab madam ne hi kiya hai (My India is great, my madam is great. Madam did everything).”


Regretting his decision to leave his aged parents, Ansari told Swaraj that he wanted to rebuild his life, get a job and possibly get married. Swaraj comforted Fauzia and expressed her sympathy by acknowledging that Ansari had faced a difficult time.

‘Kejriwal lacks integrity,’ says Prashant Bhushan’s father Advocate Shanti Bhushan, one of initial members of AAP

OpIndia Staff
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‘Kejriwal lacks integrity,’ says Prashant Bhushan’s father Advocate Shanti Bhushan, one of initial members of AAP

“Though he has some qualities, Kejriwal lacks integrity,” writes senior advocate Shanti Bhushan, in his new book ‘My second innings’. Bhushan, along with his son and advocate Prashant Bhushan, were the founding members of Aam Aadmi Party and were unceremoniously thrown out of the party by Kejriwal a few years back.

According to the book review in The Week, Bhushan says that the decision to form the party from the movement was taken at Kejriwal’s Noida residence. Bhushan had also given Rs. 1 crore seed fund to the party. However, he says he made a grievous mistake in judging Kejriwal’s character. He notes that while Kejriwal is intelligent and sharp and felt that he was a selfless person, but Kejriwal has now betrayed all the core principles of AAP.

Bhushan mentions that Kejriwal committed to major mistakes when he contested against the then prime ministerial candidate from Varanasi, Narendra Modi. First was resigning as Delhi’s chief minister and the second was to campaign only in Varanasi instead of spending a few days in other states.

Bhushan says that while Yogendra Yadav, who too had a bitter fallout with AAP Supremo and quit the party, was convinced Kejriwal was not winning Varanasi, Kejriwal was so sure of his victory against Modi that he had even decided to reach Varanasi ahead of counting so he could ‘celebrate’ by taking out a victory procession.

Earlier, too, Bhushan had accused Kejriwal of abandoning all principles the party was formed on. After the 2014 general elections, Shanti Bhushan had called him incompetent and said that he lacks organisational skills. After 2015 Delhi State Assembly elections, he had alleged that Kejriwal had taken ‘tainted’ money and given tickets to those who were willing to buy votes.

Kejriwal had justified sacking of Shanti Bhushan’s son Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav by saying ‘limits were crossed’ and ‘conspiracies were hatched’ against him.

AgustaWestland: Christian Michel visited India 300 times between 1996-2012, not a single visit since associate’s arrest in 2013

OpIndia Staff
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AgustaWestland: Christian Michel visited India 300 times between 1996-2012, not a single visit since associate’s arrest in 2013

Christian Michel, the alleged middleman in the AgustaWestland chopper scam, visited India ‘300 times’ between 1996 to 2012 but had not visited India even once after his aide Guiseppe was arrested in 2013. The argument was put forward by Advocate DP Singh appearing for the CBI before the Special CBI judge Arvind Kumar. The CBI has alleged that Michel was running away from justice since he had not visited Italy, India or even UK after his associate was arrested.

The agency also submitted that Michel had links with the ministries, people in politics, bureaucracy and many of whom are witnesses in the case. The Court has sent Michel to judicial custody at the end of 14-days police remand.

As reported by Economic Times, The Central Bureau of Investigation has submitted an auditor’s report in the AgustaWestland chopper scam which reportedly found ‘serious deviations’ in the transfer of money from M/s AgustaWestland to Christian Michel’s two companies. When the auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) had recommended ‘extensive audit’ the company the company changed the auditor.

As per the report, while contesting Michel’s bail plea, the CBI has claimed that AgustaWestland appointed Giorgio Casana to “manage a clean chit”.

The wanted fugitive and middleman in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland chopper deal, Christian Michel, was brought to India late on Tuesday night following his extradition by the UAE.

Christian Michel is accused of money laundering, bribery, and fraud in connection with the Rs 3,600-crore worth AgustaWestland scam. It is believed that not only did he pay kickbacks to politicians, officers and agents but also involved certain celebrity journalists to swing the deal.

‘Sonia Gandhi’ is ‘Bar girl in India’ says Google: Perils of artificial intelligence

OpIndia Staff
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‘Sonia Gandhi’ is ‘Bar girl in India’ says Google: Perils of artificial intelligence

Just few days after it was reported that when one searches for the word “bhikhari” on Google, the search engine returned Imran Khan as results, now a similarly shocking incident has been observed with search ‘bar girl in india’.

It has been found that if one searches for the phrase ‘bar girl in India’ on Google, the name of Congress’ former president Sonia Gandhi appears in the results. The top search result is a snippet from the Wikipedia page of Sonia Gandhi, and next top search results are also related to Sonia Gandhi only.

bar girl in india

Imran Khan and Sonia Gandhi are not the only political leaders to fall victim of Google’s bizarre search results, even the all-powerful president of the United States of America is also not immune to it. During a recent Congressional hearing, Republican Zoe Lofgren had asked Google CEO Sundar Pichai why Donald Trump’s name appear as result when one searches for the word ‘idiot’.

Pichai’s answer to that question may provide some hint about why Sonia Gandhi’s name is appearing in this search query. The Google CEO had said that the search giant does not “manually intervene” in search results, and the search results are based on crawling the content in web pages. “We provide search today for any time you type in a keyword. We, as Google, have gone out and crawled and stored copies of billions of their pages in our index, and we take the keyword and match it against the pages and rank them based on over 200 signals,” Pichai had said. “Things like relevance, freshness, popularity, how other people are using it. And based on that, you know, at any given time, we try to find the best results for that query,” he had added.

According to a report by Guardian earlier this year, Donald Trump was appearing on search results for ‘idiot’ due to a concerted campaign by anti-Trump activists. In what is known as ‘Google bombing’, it is possible to influence Google results if lots and lots of web pages contain the two seemingly unrelated content together. In the case of Trump, a massive number of people had posted the image of Donald Trump with the word ‘idiot’, mostly on Reddit, which tricked the Google algorithm to ‘assume’ that there is a relation between the two things. Google’s search algorithm takes popularity as a major factor in determining the relevance of results, and due to that, it can be influenced by such incidents, which may be intentional or unintentional.

Although the first result for the ‘bar girl in India’ is the Wiki page of Sonia Gandhi, it does not mean that the search result is influenced by Wikipedia. The Wiki page does not contain any such word. As with Donald Trump, the search phrase and the name Sonia Gandhi may have been used together in a lot of web pages, blog posts, social media posts etc, which prompted the search algorithm to ‘assume’ that one is related to the another, and then returned the Wiki page on top, as that is the top search result if one searches for Sonia Gandhi.

A few days ago, BJP MP from West Bengal Babul Supriyo also fell victim to Google search, as when one searched for his name, Google was showing 30 December 2011 as his date of death on the side panel showing his profile. It was subsequently removed after the singer cum politician had tweeted about it. In this case too, his Wikipedia page did not contain any date of death, but Google was getting the data from somewhere else.


Google indexes almost all web pages that are there on the Internet, it prepares its search results based on its analysis of those billions of pages, ranking them based on their relevance as per its calculation. In most of the time, Google returns the correct result one is looking for, but there are times like this when even Google gets fooled.

PM Modi calls out Congress’ hypocrisy on the functioning of EVMs

OpIndia Staff
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PM Modi calls out Congress’ hypocrisy on the functioning of EVMs

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday lashed out at Congress on its duplicity with regard to Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). Modi said that Congress’ stand on EVMs has been conditional and not absolute, depending upon the result of the elections.


Addressing booth level workers from Puducherry and Tamil Nadu via video-conferencing, PM Modi slammed Congress for its double-talk on the functioning of the EVMs. He alleged that Congress’ behaviour with respect to EVMs depends upon their performance in the elections. “Before the elections, Congress clamours about the functioning of the EVMs, raising suspicions about its working, but if they performed well in the elections, there is no talk about it,” he said.

He further added that Congress’ undemocratic behaviour can only be countered by strengthening the democracy in the country. Modi exhorted the BJP workers to create awareness among the public about Congress’ dangerous games.

Modi further alleged that Congress has been disrespectful towards and humiliated various institutions like the Judiciary, the Indian Armed Forces and the CAG because these institutions refused to toe the Congress’ line. “Recently, they doubted the apex court’s judgment because it was unfavourable for them. They had, in the past, threatened to impeach the Chief Justice of India(CJI),” Modi said.

It is worth mentioning that there have been no complaints regarding the functioning of the EVMs post assembly election results of the three states. In the run-up to the elections, Congress had alleged mismanagement in the handling of EVMs. However, after the Congress victory in 3 states, there has been a conspicuous silence on the allegations previously raised by them. But in Telangana, where the Congress lost the elections badly, the party had made allegations of EVM tampering after the results were out. Before the elections, Congress had even filed petitions in Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh High Courts against EVM, which were rejected by the courts.

Congress has often resorted to ‘faulty EVM machines’ justification to defend its ignominious lopsided electoral routs in several states. A full-fledged campaign was run by Congress to discredit EVMs and expose its perceived loopholes. In April 2017, the Supreme Court snubbed Congress, claiming that there is no merit in its allegations of EVM-malfunction or tampering. In August 2018, Congress had even demanded the Election Commission to switch back to the paper ballot system.

BJP sweeps Haryana civic polls, wins all 5 mayor seats

OpIndia Staff
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BJP sweeps Haryana civic polls, wins all 5 mayor seats

The Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) has registered a victory in all the 5 municipal corporations of Haryana, consisting of 110 wards.

The elections, which were held on 16th December, witnessed 69 per cent turnout out of 14 lakh eligible voters. The polls for mayor and ward councillors were held in five towns of Rohtak, Karnal, Hisar, Panipat and Yamunanagar along with ward councillor polls for two Municipal committees of Jakhal Mandi in Fatehabad and Pundri in Kaithal district.

In a first, the mayors of the cities were elected directly instead of being chosen by the councillors in Haryana. The poll results are seen significant for the incumbent BJP government after a setback in the Hindi heartland states of Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh in recent assembly elections. They are crucial from the point of view of coming 2019 General elections also.

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had personally campaigned in the polls. In Khattar’s hometown of Karnal, INLD, BSP and Congress had backed an independent candidate Asha Wadhwa to defeat BJP. However, BJP candidate Renu Bala Gupta managed to win all the 21 wards of Karnal by a margin of around 9 thousand votes.

BJP candidate Man Mohan Goyal won former Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s town Rohtak Congress-backed candidate Sita Ram by a margin of 14,776 votes.

In Hisar, BJP candidate Gautam Sardana defeated Rekha Aren with a margin of 28,091 votes. Madan Singh Chauhan defeated Congress-backed Rakesh Kumar Sharma with a margin of 40,678 votes on the seat of Yamunanagar. In biggest of them all, BJP candidate Avneet Kaur defeated Congress-backed Independent candidate with a margin of whopping 74,940 votes.

For the very first time in civic polls, choice of NOTA or none of the above was converted into a fictional candidate by the election commission. Every candidate would have to garner more votes than NOTA in order to save the deposit. In case no candidate gets more votes than NOTA, polls will be conducted again.

BJP contested from all the seats of Mayor and of 107 wards of Municipal Corporations, BSP from 1 seat of Mayor i.e. Yamunanagar, CPI (M) contested from one seat of Mayor i.e. Rohtak and INLD contested the election from 3 seats of Mayor i.e. from Hisar, Panipat & Rohtak.

NIA raids houses of 7 persons linked to ISIS for plotting to kill Hindu leaders in Tamil Nadu

OpIndia Staff
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NIA raids houses of 7 persons linked to ISIS for plotting to kill Hindu leaders in Tamil Nadu

The National Investigation Agency raided seven places in Tamil Nadu in the case of an alleged plot to kill Hindu outfit leaders by ISIS-inspired terrorists. The raids were conducted in different locations in Chennai, Coimbatore and Tindivanam. In September this year, police had arrested five people on a tip-off that they had prepared a plan to kill several Hindu leaders, including Hindu Makkal Katchi chief Arjun Sampath and Hindu Munnani leader Mookambikai Mani. Later, two more suspected terrorists were arrested based on information received from them.

During the enquiry after the arrests, it was found that the persons have connections with ISIS. They were inspired by modules of Islamic State and other terror outfits, according to police. After this, the investigation was handed over to NIA by union home ministry.

Three locations in Chennai, three in Coimbatore and one in Tindivanam were raided by NIA today morning, all residences of the seven persons arrested in the case.

The investigating teams searched the houses of Faizal Rahman in Ukkadam, R Ashiq in Chandran Street and Sahul Hameed alias Anwar in Kuniamuthur in Coimbatore. In Chennai, three locations at Otteri, Vyasarpadi and Pallavaram were raided simultaneously. These houses belong to S Salavudeen, S Shamsudeen and Jaffer Saqid Ali. In Tindivanam, the residence of S Ismail was searched. Local police of respective places accompanied NIA personnel during the raids.

On September 2, the three persons from Chennai, along with Ashiq and Ismail were arrested by police. Based on their confession, the two other persons from Coimbatore were arrested a few days later. The arrested persons are currently lodged at Coimbatore Central Prison.

During the raids, NIA seized a large number of digital devices, unaccounted cash and publications with incriminating content. It is alleged that S Ismail is a secret member of ISIS and he used to pass on information to others using a social media website. It is said that the men did not know each other personally but they communicated through social media.

Days after Congress wins Madhya Pradesh, Digvijaya Singh gets his govt bungalow back

OpIndia Staff
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Days after Congress wins Madhya Pradesh, Digvijaya Singh gets his govt bungalow back

Just days after Congress assumed power in Madhya Pradesh, the new chief minister of MP Kamal Nath has exercised his discretionary powers to sanction the government bungalow to former MP CM and a senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh. Digvijay Singh has repeatedly raised the concocted “Hindu Terror” bogey and also attended the launch of a shameful book called “26/11 – RSS Ki Saazish”.


Digvijaya Singh had to vacate his bungalow in August this year in the light of the High Court order terming such allotment unconstitutional. The HC in its order had deemed allotment of government bungalows to former CMs and ministers as unconstitutional. The HC had then also directed Uma Bharati, Kailash Joshi and Babulal Gaur to vacate their bungalows. However, former Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan had used his discretionary power to allow them to retain the government bungalows.

Shivraj Singh Chauhan government had then claimed that they worked on the letters they received from the former CMs. They claimed that they received the letters from Uma Bharati, Kailash Joshi and Babulal Gaur requesting them to retain their bungalows. No such letter was tendered by Digvijaya Singh.

The Congress had taken a high moral ground at that time claiming that Digvijay Singh did not want government accommodation. However, that facade had summarily been shattered by this move.

It is also noteworthy to highlight that there was a fratricidal conflict between senior leaders of Congress involving Singh in the run-up to the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections. Digvijaya Singh and Jyotiraditya Scindia were engaged in sending verbal volleys at each other in Rahul Gandhi’s presence. Digvijaya Singh also decided against contesting polls this assembly election.

Singh was seemingly sidelined as Rahul preferred Kamal Nath and Scindia over him. But rumours were afloat that it Digvijay Singh was working closely with Congress in Madhya Pradesh. It was speculated that Rahul Gandhi did not want to be publicly seen to be close to Digvijay Singh because of Singh’s anti-Hindu stand and Rahul’s recent pseudo temple run to appease Hindu voters.

Akali Dal MLA sends legal notice to Amazon over doormat and toilet seat with Darbar Sahib image

OpIndia Staff
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Akali Dal MLA sends legal notice to Amazon over doormat and toilet seat with Darbar Sahib image

Shiromani Akali Dal MLA from Delhi Manjinder S Sirsa has sent a legal notice to e-retailing giant Amazon for some of the products available on the platform that ‘hurt Sikh Sentiments’. Sirsa is also an elected member and general secretary of Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee.

The Akali Leader is complaining about various products available on Amazon with symbols and images related to Sikhism printed on them. Yesterday Sirsa had posted detail of a doormat with the image of Darbar Sahib or the Golden Temple in Amritsar, which is available on the website. He had said that is sheer Sheer irresponsibility of Amazon to allow such anti-India stuff on their website. He had also demanded that the company that markets the doormats with the Sikh holy shrine should be banned.


Sirsa had also said that if immediate action is not against the company selling the doormat on Amazon, a legal notice will be sent to the e-commerce company. Later he had pointed out another even more offending product, a toilet seat with imagery of the Golden temple. He warned Amazon to immediately withdraw such products and ban the sellers or to be ready for a worldwide protest against the company.


In a video posted on Twitter by the Akali leader, he said that he is demanding that not only Amazon should remove the offending items from their website, the company should also tender an apology for hurting religious sentiments. He said that in India, criminal proceedings against the company would be done under section 295A of the Indian Penal Code. Saying that the company has committed a big sin, he requested the Sikh people and parliamentarians in Canada to initiate similar criminal proceedings against the company, so that Amazon is forced to apologise and it does not dare to do such things again in future.


This is not the first time Amazon had come under fire for products being sold on the platform that hurt sentiments. Last year, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj had threatened that Amazon officials will not be granted Visa if they do not withdraw doormats with Indian flag printed on them. Those doormats were being sold on Amazon Canada. Before that, the company was forced to remove doormats with Hindu Gods after a massive online protest against the company.

NITI Aayog’s vice chairperson slams Rahul Gandhi for his tweet on farm loan waiver

OpIndia Staff
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NITI Aayog’s vice chairperson slams Rahul Gandhi for his tweet on farm loan waiver

NITI Ayog’s vice chairperson Rajiv Kumar today expressed his disapproval of Congress President Rahul Gandhi’s tweet on farm loan waivers announced in Assam and Gujarat. Rahul Gandhi had earlier tweeted that his government’s move to grant farm loan waivers had managed to wake up the Assam and Gujarat governments from their slumber.

Earlier, Congress president Rahul Gandhi had claimed that the governments of Assam and Gujarat have announced farm loan waivers in their respective states only after the Congress government of MP and Chhattisgarh announced it.


With his tweet, Rahul insinuated that the Assam and Gujarat governments were indifferent to farmers’ distress in their respective states and it was only after the Congress governments’ waving off of farm loans in MP and Chhattisgarh that these governments sprung back into action and declared loan waivers.

Speaking to the media, Rajiv Kumar repudiated Rahul’s insinuations and claimed that no other government would have ever worked for farmers as much as the present one.


Kumar added that it was the present government which implemented the recommendations provided by the Swaminathan Committee to alleviate farmers’ woes and raise the credit for farmers to Rs 10.50 lakh crore.

We had earlier reported how the Modi government has developed a multi-pronged strategy to deal with the chronic agrarian distress. The BJP government had last year waived off farm loans in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh but has not considered it as a panacea for the persistent agriculture miseries.

It had also hiked up the MSP prices as per Swaminathan Committee recommendations, besides launching many new initiatives. PM Modi’s government has announced that they have set a target to double the income of farmers by 2022 and the NITI Ayog and various government organisations are working to achieve the goal.

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